Tumbling advertising revenues cut pre-tax profits by almost a half at Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), the publisher of the two national titles and a raft of local papers, in the first half to March 29.

As a consequence, the company has stepped up its cost-cutting programme and raised the number of job cuts from a previously announced 1,000 to 1,500. But a spokesman said the "vast majority" of the job losses had already taken place.

The profit before tax was £77 million, against £144 million, before one-off charges and write-offs, including £49 million to cover reorganisation and redundancies at the newspapers and financial publisher Euromoney and a £179 million write-down on the value of businesses acquired in recent years. These technical factors take the headline pre-tax loss to £239 million.

The company now says it plans cost cuts of £150 million, up from a previously announced figure of £100 million. In March, it announced another 500 redundancies at its regional titles, bringing the number of job losses there to 1,000. DMGT now says the number of jobs cut across the group will be 1,500.

Martin Morgan, chief executive of DMGT, said the first half had been badly hit by the impact of the recession on consumer media advertising revenues. These fell by 16 per cent at the newspaper titles, but the company has detected some improvement in April and May.

The first half figures include unspecified losses from the Evening Standard, which was sold to Alexander Lebedev, the Russian businessman, in February.

Shares in DMGT rose 1.75p to 313.35p in early trading.

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